ECO.RRIDOR

In the past, the Indo-Burma biodiversity region featured a terrain with a finger-like structure. Later, the British established tea estates around the existing reserve forest (currently known as Lauachara National Forest) to take advantage of the perfectly sloped hilly terrain. Over time, the tea estate community and invasive rubber plantations gradually encroached upon the reserve forest.

Our focus was on the Jagchera tea estate community and their settlement, as they are major stakeholders in the forest for additional livelihood. Their adjacent settlement area has contributed to the fragmentation of the core forest. As descendants of slaves forcibly imported from Assam, India, they are denied citizenship in Bangladesh. Consequently, their lives revolve around the tea estate and income-generating activities associated with it, passing from generation to generation. Deprived by the bureaucratic tea estate syndicate, they lack basic living standards and daily wages, leading them to seek alternative income sources, such as selling furniture & firewood from the reserve forest or working for minimal wages in other local agricultural ventures during the off-season.

This project aimed to explore sustainable sources of economic stability for them through interventions like social forestry and aquaculture in hillside creeks, thereby connecting the blue-green network to reduce ecological disruption, supporting the co-existence of ecological corridors and settlement patterns to address ecological fragmentation.